NEWSLETTERS |
NEWS FROM THE KOANGA INSTITUTE SEPTEMBER 07
Welcome to spring!
We've been very busy since I wrote the last newsletter, lots of exciting things on the go.
Mavis Smith, still an active and avid gardener at over 90 years old,
Mavis Smiths home, Totara House, which will one day pass to the Matakohe Museum
The old corn crib at Totara House
Gail and Errol McIntyre beside an old plum from one of the very old
The old potato storage shed on the McIntyre farm
Benji and I are grafting this material at this very time in the nursery so there will be limited numbers available of some of this material next winter. You will receive the Koanga Gardens Centre for Sustainable Living Fruit and Nut Tree Catalogue with your summer edition of the Koanga Institute catalogue in February.
Some of the exciting material we collected in Winter 06 is being grafted at the moment as well; Pouto Gold nectarines, an old gold fleshed variety we hadn't seen before, Green's peach, a very large, out-standing, golden, old peach from the Green family at Matakana, and the old Arapahoe peach that we were gifted last winter as well. The Arapahoe peach will become one of our 'flagship' plants, just as the River peach has and the Dalmatian beans are. It has red leaves, red skin, gold flesh and is red around the stone with red streaks going into the gold. It is freestone, tastes fantastic and is very disease resistant as well. It has actually been sent to us by several people over the last few years. We decided to call it after the place an elderly gentleman who gifted it to a woman who gifted it to us, used to live. He was one of the old Dalmatian Gumdiggers, and we always check out Dalmatian plant material carefully because we have come to have a lot of respect for the Dalmatians as gardeners. They were obviously gardeners extraordinaire
It was also great to have been able to gift back to Makaera, an elder from the Waiatea Marae (Te Uri O Hau) some figs, peaches and lemon trees that were propagated from the material collected there in Winter 06 as well.
Our fruit tree collections are still expanding with exciting material, all of which will become available to our members as we are able to establish our own trees. Details of the plant material available as scion wood is on the website and will be updated each year. You can request a copy if you'd like one from info@koanga.org.nz.
The Koanga Institute has licensed several nurseries to grow out our special plant material, so that the trees are available to you all (Forgotten Fruits trees available through the Koanga gardens Centre for Sustainable Living shop; Sure Union trees available through Edible Gardens, and Andrew Land’s trees available through the shop). We do not patent our varieties because we believe they should not be 'owned', but belong to us all. We do however ask that only our licensed growers propagate this material commercially because it is the only way we can ensure we get a small royalty paid back to us which enables us to maintain the huge collections and continue finding more. It is also the only way we can ensure that all the knowledge we have built up about each tree is passed to you in terms of having the right tree on the best rootstock and accurate cultural knowledge coming with the tree. We work very closely with our nursery men.
The government is not doing this work because it costs a lot of money. We are only able to do it because we have a very dedicated team of people who believe in what we are doing, (and often work as volunteers), and also because of the support we get from our members. It is amazing what we have achieved! If you are looking to plant heritage fruit trees, please support our work by buying trees through our shop or Edible Gardens!
The Koanga Institute has recently been gifted a large private collection of New Zealand heritage seeds, potentially the largest private collection remaining in New Zealand. We will be growing out these vegetable and flower seeds over the next year to see what we have, in comparison to what we already had, and we anticipate that we will be able to add many new lines to ours. It was a very humbling and very special moment to be gifted this collection and I'm very proud to be able to say that with the level of support we are currently receiving from members and supporters, we are anticipating we will be able to grow all of those seeds out quite quickly to make sure we keep them alive and available to you.
My big news right now is that I am almost ready to send off to the printer the new book I've written over the winter, “The Koanga Garden Guide” (as an alternative to the Yates Garden Guide!) It is a complete gardening guide covering all aspects of organic, sustainable growing for the home gardener using heritage seeds and trees. It includes comprehensive sections on Beginning In The Garden, seed saving, small animals(chooks etc), companion planting, full cultural details of all the veges, moon calendars and also an updated version of “What's Happening” (the original book which contains the monthly garden management notes). It is a large and comprehensive book containing many colour pictures and beautiful drawings, and I think you'll be as excited as me to see a book like this published. Look for it in around two to three months.
I'm also hard out putting in a new garden in conjunction with Te Whanau a Apanui in the Eastern Bay of Plenty - not where we thought we were going when we left Kohatu Toa, but it is where we have been guided to go!!! (More on that in the next newsletter - loads of exciting projects we're getting involved with there as well).
Have a wonderful spring in your gardens. Our main projects this summer are our usual comprehensive seed grow outs and orchard work, to grow out the new collection that has come in and to get the new seed storage room finished and full of seeds. It is wonderful to see the support that is coming in, in the form of donations to help us get the new seed storage room built, and also the donations that are coming in to support the Brassica grow outs. Up dates elsewhere on the website.
Arohanui Kay
To read our old newsletters please click on the edition below:
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First of all this past winter we visited several very special old orchards (and orchardists!), gathering plant material for our collections. It was really exciting talking to the gardeners (some of them very elderly) and being shown around their properties and given the stories of their parents, and grandparents; the original pakeha settlers in the areas we went to. There will be a feature in the February edition of the Institute catalogue showing you where we went and people we spoke to, and the plant material we collected.
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